Interview with Jeff Combs

MEET NUNUM'S WINTER 2019 CONTRIBUTOR: Jeff Combs

5/2/2020

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NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

NUNUM's Interview with Jeff Combs

Jeff Combs gifted our last issue

of the year with something we'd been waiting a very long time to give to our readers. We were lucky enough to get a little time with Jeff and by now you know the first thing I asked him.

Jeff, what was the first book you remember picking and reading by yourself?

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.

Nice, a classic for sure. It was on my shelf, still is, but it wasn't first for me. Okay lets get more current, what was the last book you read that made you say damn that was a good book?

American Monster by J.S. Breukelaar. Her writing style is unique and surreal. There’s a lot going on in the book and for the first few pages, I was a bit confused. I’m still not finished yet (I’ve got about 100 pages left), so I can’t rate the ending, but so far American Monster is my favorite out of all the books I've read in 2019.

An Afternoon by the Ocean words by Jeff Combs, art by Ryota Matsumoto

Who are your go-to writers when you need something to read on holiday?

An Afternoon by the Ocean words by Jeff Combs, art by Ryota Matsumoto

Elmore Leonard, Don Winslow, and Neil Gaiman.

I put eyes on one of three, so thank you for two new beach reads. What about you Jeff, what writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer?

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson, and Eileen Gunn’s short stories.

Okay, now we are getting on the same wavelength, Snow Crash is outstanding. Staying contemporary, which contemporary author gets your admiration?

Margaret Atwood.

A Canadian, well played and definitely a favourite of everyone here as well. Staying with the learning theme for a moment more, is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers?

Method Writing by Jack Grapes. From this book I learned to focus less on the end result, and concentrate on the process of writing, so I could improve through practice. It also helped a lot with learning to write better descriptions.

An Afternoon by the Ocean words by Jeff Combs, art by Ryota Matsumoto

Your writing has a very distinct style to it Jeff, is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style?

An Afternoon by the Ocean words by Jeff Combs, art by Ryota Matsumoto

Alan Watts

One more for my reading list. Okay this one is just my personal curiousity, pen, pencil or phone, which one do you reach for when you need to write something down?

Pen and paper. I mostly write on my desktop computer and almost never use my phone to jot anything down.

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?

Don’t let a few rejections discourage you. Try writing a whole bunch of rough drafts, and then pick a couple of those to turn into finished stories.

Well put. Editing, couldn't be more important. If you had to choose one album and that was the only music you could listen to for the next decade, what would you pick?

Lonerism by Tame Impala.

Could you invent a new word that doesn’t exist in the English language and give its definition?

An Afternoon by the Ocean words by Jeff Combs, art by Ryota Matsumoto

Bureaucratitopia - A type of society that protects and propagates a fossilized and mediocre ruling class and thwarts innovation through the use of complex procedures, confusing jargon, and rigid adherence to unnecessary regulations.

An Afternoon by the Ocean words by Jeff Combs, art by Ryota Matsumoto

Hilarious, hopefully not one I'll need to use soon, but hilarious. As you know NUNUM is super big on the visual, before we say goodbye, I would love to know who your favourite visual artists are?

Alex Pardee, Salvador Dali, McBess, and Kim Jung Gi.

Jeff Combs writes fiction and poetry. His poem, Suburban Corporate

Ecosystem, was published by Liquid Imagination, and some of his short stories of 100 words or less can be found on Friday Flash Fiction. Jeff lives in Atlanta with his son, their dog, and a leopard gecko named Jellybean.